Best Laid Plans
by lynnxlady
Summary: [Ishtar x Duzell] Ishtar, Phelios, Duzell, and the point where it all intersects.. Nothing is going according to plan.


**A/N: Written after volume 9; should be considered AU after that point (as I'm surethe issue will pop upin canon pretty soon). Request fic from my livejournal, made by Shikomekidomi, for Duzell/Ishtar.**

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It shouldn't have gone like this. He doesn't know much for sure at the moment, but he does know that.

"Ugh," she says somewhere behind him, and he turns to see her there, hefting her sword, Phelios' sword. The wind whips in her hair and her dress, and then she tucks the hair behind her ears and into her collar, and lifts her skirt in one hand. That makes her grip on her sword ridiculously loose; he could knock it aside easily, even from here. He thinks he could hate her for that, if he could only be sure. "Duzie, get back here right now!"

Hissing in frustration after she stumbles to her knees, she kicks off her heels and charges after him barefoot. Each footfall is light and quick, rustling in the dry leaves underfoot, and the sound is incongruous, wrong, like jogging to the gallows. He wants to shake her for it.

There are too many things wrong with this.

He lets her catch him in a clearing over the crest of the first hill; great oak boughs stretch over them, bare in places, burst into dying vibrancy in others. The world is taut and bright with autumn, and half-dead too.

She skids to a halt a good ten feet away, sword up and ready. Not enough space to protect her, he thinks disdainfully; he could cut it down to nothing in a split instant. Her feet are planted a shoulder's width apart, her stance careful, like she's working with lessons she's half forgotten and no instincts of her own. Which, he knows, is exactly the case. "What are you doing?"

He says, "Go and gather up Darres and Vord and Yuujel to protect you, Phelios, you moron. Then you'll stand a chance."

"Don't call me Phelios," she says sharply. "Get your head out of your ass, and we'll talk."

She is responsible for a good number of those things gone wrong.

He snorts, amused. Then he puts another thing awry, and says quietly, "Put away the sword and go home. You're running on other people's canned magic, and your ruelles won't be enough this time."

"Stop it already," she says. "I'll fight you if that'll get this out of your system—"

"Did you miss everything I just said?"

He can't quite believe he's trying to convince Phelios to go home like a sensible girl and come back with his allies. Her allies. Reincarnation is hell on pronouns.

"Probably. You know me," she said, grinning.

Another thing wrong, and he isn't sure if the way it jars in his mind is his or her fault: Phelios shouldn't be Ishtar. He shouldn't grin like that, arrogant and irreverent and just a little bit hurt.

He darts to her and has her jaw in his hand, tilting her face, before she can even gasp—then she jerks, reflexes hopelessly behind, sword flashing into his shoulder. It stings for a moment, the pain burrowing in heart deep the way holy magic does, and when that has gone, bleeds like anything, but it isn't terribly deep. Won't even slow him down. "Should've gone for the throat, Phelios," he says, like if he says _his_ name enough times, Ishtar's face will melt into his, and he can kill him without seeing her.

"Duzie…" she says when he tilts her face, trying to find Phelios in her. His blood has run down her sword and is all over her hands. She looks like she could be his killer, which she was once upon a time.

That's the only thing that's right here. Phelios is going to die, and he is going to slit his throat and bleed him dry. The memory fills him with a tight anger, and keeps him on his course. He died before.

"You've got the same jaw, but I suppose that's more family resemblance and less reincarnation at work."

He releases her and she rubs her chin. "That hurt—that _hurt_, you jerk." The blade slips a little deeper into his arm, nicking the muscle now, and he spasms involuntarily at the pain. He decides it's out of petty revenge but not deadly intent; he gets the impression Ishtar would rather not off him, even now.

That's another problem: he wishes his old enemy would remember, spark to life in Ishtar's eyes, and lunge for his throat. It's a bit difficult to kill someone you'd rather liked when they'd rather not kill you. But he supposes he and Phelios played at that before it came to the final battle, so it's not impossible to overcome.

He opens his mouth, hesitates. It would be crossing a line, one he isn't sure if he can uncross, and why is that a problem? He's going to kill her, and that's a difficult line to uncross too, you know. He smirks at her and absently twists a lock of her hair around his finger.

"I could always kill someone else," he said. "Driving Phelios mad has its own appeal, and you…" He stops, and has to practically force out the rest; the words are cheap in his mouth, "…blame yourself every time someone dies for you. Jill, Krai, Falan, Darres—"

Her eyes go wide, wide, her whole body taut and quietly furious, but Ishtar isn't suited to being quiet. She shouts out as she tears Sidia from his arm—blood spatters in an arc, like new life on the leaves curled up brown and dead on the forest floor—and swings it at him, snarling. He dodges each swipe, a tight smile on his mouth, full of a smug, aching satisfaction.

"It wasn't supposed to happen like this," she says in the first lull, when she falls to her knees, chest heaving for air. The echo of his own thoughts makes his mouth twitch with a dreary sort of amusement. Her sword droops to the ground, tip burrowing in the trampled leaves, and her face twists up. "Dumbass. You bit me in the beginning. Why didn't you figure out I was Phelios then? I could've dealt with a stranger killing me."

He drops into a crouch alongside her, and tips her face up to look at him. Her cheeks are flushed with exertion, and her mouth crumples as she spits out a curse, her hand coming up to clasp his wrist. Her palm's clammy with her sweat and his blood, and when she lets go, it leaves a mix of the two, red that shines, lit alive in the dying afternoon light. "I'm glad you're looking like you. It would be awkward to fight yourself and lose, wouldn't it?"

That's a…different way to think of it. He changes, just to annoy her, and there's something lost in the change as he's, hhhmm, rather naked, but she smiles a tight little smile. He smiles back at her with her mouth, thin and rose.

He'll miss her when she's gone. He flicks a strand of hair out of her eyes, watches her eyes—dark and hard and weary—in her face, and burns her into his mind in a way he's sure he'll regret.

She leans over, so near he can taste her in the air, copper and lilac and salt, and licks her lips in a way that isn't seductive, but just fact, wet tongue on dry lips, but he feels a familiar flush of heat. "Remember what I told you, in the very beginning? That I'd cast La Gamme for Darres? Well, close enough you know. I guess we'll do this again, though that's not right, is it? You'll do this again, with some unlucky bastard who got stuck with Phelios' soul." Her mouth opens, tongue and lips shaping the spell that's going to kill them both—again—

Her death is jerked right out of his hands, and he finds that pisses him off, because, he realizes abruptly, he was going to let her live.

"Shut up—I've changed my mind—"

Well, that sounds stupid. It's another moment gone wrong for his collection, and maybe gone all right at the same time.

His hand lands on her shoulder, thumb on the delicate hollow of her throat, and he can feel her breathe. His mouth slams on hers, tongue getting in the way of that damned spell; tongue between her lips and on her tongue, tangling up the consonants. Hand curving up to clasp in his hair, she kisses him back for a moment—it's done, he thinks, relieved—and then sticks him with her sword without finesse, not that finesse matters point-blank.

The explosion of holy magic flings him backwards, ripping into his body. But he hangs onto her with a blind sort of determination even as he might be cut apart, fingers digging into her shoulders and her hand still caught in his hair. When he can think again, he's amazed she's still there, her knees digging into his thighs and her hips pressed to his, fingers in his hair and clothes with a reflexive harshness. He's still between the spell and the open air and she shouts a garbled version into his mouth. He's only heard it once before, but he knows it by heart.

He'll be upset with her if he dies naked.

One more syllable. He can feel it hanging heavy in the air, the knife about to drop, the bow about to break—and then her mouth closes against his, and the gathered spell hums, disgruntled in the air.

"Duzie," she says, hot and angry.

"I know," he says, sagging beneath her.

"Look at me."

He does, and picks a leaf from her hair. She watches him for a minute, and then her anger looms like a physical change in her eyes. That's when she slugs him in the right eye. "Don't ever, ever do that again." She struggles to her feet and sways there a moment, swiping Sidia clumsily on her skirt. "Clean up and come home when you're done," she says, waving at him, and stumbles away.


End file.
